As reported by the US Department of Energy, the true revival of the electric vehicle didn't happen until around the start of the 21st century. It is generally believed that one of two events sparked the interest seen today in electric vehicles. The first turning point many have suggested was the introduction of the Toyota Prius® hybrid automobile. Released in Japan in 1997, the Prius® hybrid automobile became the world's first mass-produced hybrid electric vehicle. In 2000, the Prius® hybrid automobile was released worldwide, and it became an instant success with celebrities, helping to raise the profile of the car. To make the Prius® hybrid automobile a reality, Toyota used a nickel metal hydride battery—a technology that was supported by the Energy Department's research.
The other event that helped reshape electric vehicles was the announcement in 2006 that a small Silicon Valley startup, Tesla Motors, would start producing a luxury electric sports car that could go more than 200 miles on a single charge. Tesla's announcement and subsequent success spurred many big automakers to accelerate work on their own electric vehicles. In late 2010, the Chevy Volt® and the Nissan LEAF® electric automobiles were released in the U.S. market. The first commercially available plug-in hybrid, the Volt has a gasoline engine that supplements its electric drive once the battery is depleted, allowing consumers to drive on electric for most trips and gasoline to extend the vehicle's range. In comparison, the LEAF® automobile is an all-electric vehicle (often called a battery-electric vehicle, an electric vehicle or just an EV for short), meaning it is only powered by an electric motor.
Over the next few years, other automakers began rolling out electric vehicles in the U.S.; yet, consumers were still faced with one of the early problems of the electric vehicle—where to charge their vehicles on the go. Through the Recovery Act, the Energy Department invested more than $115 million to help build a nation-wide charging infrastructure, installing more than 18,000 residential, commercial and public chargers across the country. Automakers and other private businesses also installed their own chargers at key locations in the U.S., bringing today's total of public electric vehicle chargers to more than 8,000 different locations with more than 20,000 charging outlets.
At the same time, new battery technology—supported by the Energy Department's Vehicle Technologies Office—began hitting the market, helping to improve a plug-in electric vehicle's range. In addition to the battery technology in nearly all of the first generation hybrids, the Department's research also helped develop the lithium-ion battery technology used in the Volt® automobile. More recently, the Department's investment in battery research and development has helped cut electric vehicle battery costs by 50 percent in the last four years, while simultaneously improving the vehicle batteries' performance (meaning their power, energy and durability). This in turn has helped lower the costs of electric vehicles, making them more affordable for consumers.
Many charging systems have been proposed and others are currently being marketed to serve the burgeoning need for providing energy to the ever growing numbers of electric cars. For example, US patent application publication number 20140354229 proposes a vehicle charging station that includes a track configured to extend across a plurality of vehicle parking spaces and a movable charging apparatus supported by the track. There are numerous other types of locking electric vehicle charging connector systems both proposed and currently available.
Existing charging systems include inductive charging devices and rotating magnetic pairs. Unfortunately, there are several drawbacks to these known systems including inefficiencies as related to direct contact, weight and size, and interference due to strong magnetic fields produced by the chargers. Further, they do not offer bi-directional support, thereby eliminating the desirable possibility of grid sharing, power backup (as for a grid failure), or any other function that would require the movement of current from the vehicle or equipment to the port attached structure.
Further still, none of the currently known designs provide a safe and easy guided connection to a charging port. Most are cumbersome at best with several connectors that must be carefully aligned by hand with a mating charging port. The novel system disclosed herein for the first time features a universal method for connecting for charging integral with parking. It will transfer power with current up to about 1000 amps at voltage up to about 1000 volts.